November 11, 2004

"we want a deal done with Altanmia within 24 hours and don't take any excuses."

An NYT article is worth reading, on the curious business of the Halliburton Corp, supposedly guilty of overcharging, actually being forced by our "diplomats" to buy expensive fuel from only one Kuwaiti company:

...Another document, an e-mail message from the United States ambassador to Kuwait, shows the urgency American diplomats felt. On Dec. 2, 2003 - shortly before Pentagon auditors questioned the fuel prices but well after the issue had been raised in Washington - the ambassador, Richard H. Jones, who also served as deputy administrator of the coalition authority in Iraq, wrote to a colleague: "Please, tell KBR[Halliburton's subsidiary] to get off their butts and conclude deals with Kuwait NOW! Tell them we want a deal done with Altanmia within 24 hours and don't take any excuses."

Other documents suggest that American diplomats were so eager to bolster fuel supplies and to cultivate Kuwait's wider cooperation in the Iraq struggle that they rejected questions being raised about the propriety of the KBR-Altanmia arrangements. "The Government of Kuwait is ready to do whatever is necessary to get fuel to Iraq," a Dec. 3 memo addressed to Mr. Jones reads. But KBR's reticence to sign further contracts at that time, it said, not only threatens the fuel supply but "is undermining our ability to get other very high priority items from the Government of Kuwait."...

SO, I will just sit here and wait for the filthy lying SOB's concerned patriotic citizens of the "Progressive" sort who have been screaming about the evil war-profiteering of the Halliburton Corporation to now turn with equal fury on our State Department....Ha ha ha...

And who will be surprised if certain diplomats, when they retire, move to lucrative positions in a new "think tank?" Perhaps The Altanmia Institute of East-West Peace Studies...But, hey, it's OK, they are all Democrats, and only Republicans can be war-profiteers...

Posted by John Weidner at November 11, 2004 11:01 AM

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